This seminar is part of the Shorenstein Forum Cross-Strait Seminar Series. Dr. Wu Xinbo is currently a professor at the Center for American Studies, Fudan University, and the Vice-President, Shanghai Institute of American Studies. He teaches China-U.S. relations and writes widely about China?s foreign policy, Sino-American relations and Asia-Pacific issues. Professor Wu is the author of Dollar Diplomacy and Major Powers in China, 1909?1913 (Fudan University Press, 1997) and has published numerous articles and book chapters in China, the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, and India. He is also a frequent contributor to Chinese and international newspapers. Born in 1966 in Anhui Province, East China, Wu Xinbo entered Fudan University in 1982 as an undergraduate student and received his B.A. in history in 1986. In 1992, he got his Ph.D. in international relations from Fudan University. In the same year, he joined the Center for American Studies, Fudan University. In 1994, he spent one year at the George Washington University as a visiting scholar. In fall 1997, he was a visiting fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University and the Henry Stimson Center in Washington DC. From January to August 2000, he was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Karin Lee is the senior associate for the East Asia Policy Education Project for the Friends Committee on National Legislation.  Prior to this position, Karin worked for the American Friends Service Committee for many years, most recently based in Tokyo, where she facilitated regional exchanges on topics of peace, reconciliation, and economic justice. She has visited North Korea three times, and South Korea about twenty-five times. She is a regular contributor to the Korea Quarterly, for which she writes a column on U.S. policy toward the Koreas.

Octobers and democracy in Thailand are inextricably entwined. On 14 October 1973, thirty years to the day before Dr. Pitsuwan will speak at Stanford, Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, Thailand's strongman prime minister, was driven into exile. Parliamentary democracy flourished for three years until it was violently shut down in October 1976 following Thanom's return. On 12 October 2002 in Bali, extremist Muslims took more than 200 lives and made terrorism an urgent priority for Thailand and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Relevant events in Southeast Asia in October 2003 include three summits--of ASEAN (Bali, 7-8 Oct.), of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (Kuala Lumpur, 16-18 Oct.), and of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (Bangkok, 20-21 Oct.), the latter to include U.S. President George W. Bush. Dr. Pitsuwan will this unusual conjunction of anniversaries and summits to explore some of the ways in which democracy, terrorism, regionalism, and Islamism in Southeast Asia overlap and intersect. About the speaker Surin Pitsuwan served as Thailand's foreign minister from 1997 to 2001. He was the first Muslim to hold that post. He has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Thailand's House of Representatives since 1986. He has also been a columnist for Thai newspapers and a political science lecturer in Thammasat University. In 1983-84 he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. He earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1982 after graduating cum laude from the Claremont Men's College in Claremont, California.

On 19 January 2001, General Angelo Reyes, then chief of staff of the armed forces, led a transfer of military support from democratically elected but disgraced President Joseph Estrada to his vice-president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. A day later, Arroyo became president. At the time, the general defended his action as "promot[ing] the public good under extreme circumstances." Soon thereafter, President Arroyo named him her secretary of defense. In July 2003, nearly 300 heavily armed junior military officers seized the center of Manila?s business district, rigged explosives around the buildings, and demanded President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?s resignation. They accused Reyes of corruption and urged him to resign as well. Reyes denied the charge as baseless. Saying he wanted to spare his family and the armed forces further abuse, he resigned in August. In October, President Arroyo appointed him Ambassador-at-Large for Counter-Terrorism. What if any conditions justify military intervention in the name of the public interest? In this lecture, Reyes will argue that in certain extreme circumstances, civilian democracy can be served by military intervention. He will also warn, however, that such intervention can undermine democracy in the long run. Angelo Reyes' military career lasted thirty-five years. He commanded at all levels of the Philippine armed forces. His field experience included counter-insurgent operations in Mindanao and Luzon. He holds advanced degrees from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Asian Institute of Management in Manila. On Wednesday, October 1, 2003 he was appointed Ambassador-at-Large for Counter-terrorism by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

This is event is sponsored by the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and takes place on the Berkeley campus. Since 1997 Indonesians have had mounting reasons to doubt their national project. Not to mention the deformation of national identity attributable to Soeharto. "We must begin again from zero," said Semar in Republik Bagong, a comedy-drama that played to packed houses in Jakarta in 2001. Zero? Surely not. But if it is not zero, what is Indonesia?